Oftentimes people become so fixed in their thinking – and in their belief that everyone else thinks the same way – that they unwittingly raise the curtain and expose the wizard of their flawed thinking, showing it for what it really is.  Statinators have done just that in an article in the current issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

The study, Effects of High-Dose Modified-Release Nicotinic Acid on Atherosclerosis and Vascular Function, compares the increase in carotid artery plaque over a 12-month period in subjects taking niacin versus those taking a placebo.  It turns out that those subjects taking the niacin experienced a shrinkage of their plaque whereas plaque grew larger on those taking the placebo. The revealing hitch in this study is that both groups were on statins, which means the group on statins alone was the placebo group.  Therefore the data from this study shows that statins alone do not reverse the growth of plaque (at least not plaque in the carotid arteries) despite lowering LDL levels.  Taking the logic a little further, the data from this study gives weight to the idea that a lowered LDL doesn’t reduce plaque growth.

There is a lot we can glean from this study and the from the authors’ commentary on it.

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You can see me in the photo at the left kneeling by a headstone in a forlorn, weed-infested graveyard in a bad part of Dallas, Texas.  The remains below that headstone are none other than those of Clyde Barrow, the male half of the notorious duo who ravaged the the southern states in the late 1920s/ early 1930s, and who were made famous to our generation by the hit movie Bonnie & Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway  and Warren Beatty.  In real life, just as in the movie, Bonnie and Clyde drove into an ambush in rural Louisiana where they met their ends in a hail of bullets on May 23, 1934.

How I came to be in this dreary place on a rainy day started with a story my dad told MD and me on our last trip to visit the folks in Michigan.  I can’t remember now how it came up, but he started telling us about the time he saw the remains of Adam “Eddie” Richetti, the sidekick of Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd in a funeral home in Bolivar, Missouri.  My father grew up on a farm near a little town called Halfway, which is ‘halfway’ between Bolivar and Buffalo.  For the folks in Halfway, Bolivar was the closest ‘big’ town where everyone went to shop.  At that time, Halfway was basically a wide spot in the road.

In June 1933 ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd and Adam Richetti (shown at right) stopped off to get their stolen car fixed at Bitzer Chevrolet where Richetti’s brother, Joe, worked as a mechanic.  As they were cooling their heels there, the Polk County Sheriff who lived in Bolivar, William Killingsworth, wandered in.  My dad didn’t know if he just happened in or if he had heard the gangsters might be there.  I suspect the former since he didn’t come in with guns drawn.  Floyd and Richetti took him captive at gun point, took Joe’s car and lit out for Kansas City.  Along the way they ditched Joe’s car, stole another vehicle, switched their hostages (they had collected another along the way) over, and kept on traveling.  Before they reached Kansas City, they let Killingsworth and the other hostage go by the side of the road, and drove off.  They reached Kansas City, and there was where the story went murky.

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I’m throwing up a quick post just so you all won’t think I’ve been captured and sold into slavery.  MD and I are on the coast-to-coast Sous Vide Supreme introduction tour, which  ends today.  I thought I would have plenty of time to blog and Tweet on this tour, but it has ended up being a huge time gobbler.  What with getting all the stuff set up, checking in and out of hotels, running for flights and flying all over heck and gone, there has been barely any time to keep up with emails let alone fiddling with the blog.

As I type these words, we’re at 37,000 feet somewhere between Chicago and New York.  After all the complaining I’ve done in previous posts about my disastrous experiences with a multitude of airlines, I’ve got to say that this tour has gone without a hitch.  We’ve flown U.S. Air, American, Alaskan Airlines, and now Delta, and all flights have been on time on both ends.  We’re traveling with a crew of nine, so I am thankful for all the airlines we’ve flown and the weather gods for allowing all this to come off on schedule.

I planned to post about the different venues as we went from city to city, but as I said, the time constraints have been such that I really couldn’t do it.  I’ve got a zillion photos that I’ll post in due course and a lot of info about cooking that I’ve learned from the best.

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The video below shows Chris Gardner, Ph.D., researcher from Stanford University, giving a presentation about the data he generated when he compared the Atkins diet to the Ornish diet, the Zone diet and the LEARN diet.  You all probably remember this study, which he published in JAMA in 2007, showing the low-carb diet brought about greater weight loss and better lab value improvement than the other three diets.

As you watch this long video (and you should watch it; it’s extremely entertaining and filled with a ton of good info), there are a few things you should note.

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